CMV - The Show

Having my work exhibited with my peers at Colours May Vary was a great experience! Hanging work I was proud of on the wall for people to see and buy felt great, and the night was a celebration for all involved! Since the show I know I’ve sold a print which is great as personally I wasn’t sure whether my piece would be commercially viable given it included the name of the author with a range of his work; niche?

Being involved in the show, all the way from the start with promotional material through to the final launch night, has been a real eye opener in how the process of booking an exhibition works. Andy and 

CMV - PR Team

For this year’s Colours May Vary Exhibition, me and Chay were volunteered ourselves as team leaders for the PR Team. PR is something I haven’t done before, but I feel fairly confident with marketing and promotional work due to past experiences, not to mention working as a part of this team would put us in touch with real world contacts in the Leeds area that could prove very useful later down the line. 

We had to employ a strict deadline system and assign roles in order that the promo and exhibition itself ran smoothly. All work had to be brought in by the 2nd February, with invites to the private show emailed out by the 9th, as well as all physical flyers and posters for the show distributed by then too, ready for the show opening on the 12th. 

Throughout this process we took into consideration who we wanted to come to this event, we spoke to tutors from our course as well as doing individual research into local creatives ourselves. Me and Chay compiled a list of contacts to send out private invites to and had this Ok’d by members of staff. We also took it upon ourselves to visit the PR team at LCA to get them to send out an email advertising the event, as well as contacting Colours May Vary themselves and asking them to send out an email to their contacts. This allowed for a wide spread but focused audience attending the show. We then distributed flyers and posters in relevant cafes, bars and shops around the area. We targeted places primarily home to a creative demographic; as well as student hubs. In turn the promotional work wasn’t wasted and every poster and flyer printed contributed to the success of the show.

Life's a Pitch; Final Presentation & Evaluation

Before presenting it became apparent that a few members of the team felt a little nervous about public speaking. Though it does make me a little nervous myself, I felt confident with our company and the knowledge I had about it, so took the lead speaking role throughout our presentation. We made a few notes on each slide in presenter mode on power point to help if we got stuck at any point, but for the most part I felt we had a solid grasp on who, what and how our company would be.

Notes from Presentation View on PP

Slide 1. -

Slide 2. Names, roles? Designers, PR manager – jazz, accounting and finance - han, studio and store management - katie , distribution and manufacturing - jade

Slide 3. As stated based in leeds. -a face to face social brand involving audience with creation

-high crafted, illustrated and valued product

-positive impact on the environment a creative candle making company

-a company or people -Cherished and loved products

Slide 4. Range; basic, black magic bees, basic most affordable basic colours and packaging, black magic more experimentation in candle aesthetics eg glitter, melting away, shape, fragrance, bees environmentally friendly help support bee population & charity. Both black magic and soy more environmentally friendly compared with paraffin wax vegan friendly

Slide 5. Website: for commercial use with a clean accessible easy to navigate for all ages young and old whilst still retaining contemporary fresh and high end professional finish 

Slide 6. Website: for commercial use with a clean accessible easy to navigate for all ages young and old whilst still retaining contemporary fresh and high end professional finish 

Slide 7. Website: for commercial use with a clean accessible easy to navigate for all ages young and old whilst still retaining contemporary fresh and high end professional finish 

Slide 8. Online presennce; establish social media accounts such as fb insta twitter and blog to add personal element alongside website, contact manufactures and suppliers printing companies, buy in wax and mold // make ourselves, have packaging printed by third party to start, clients, start with own online store then potentially move to independent local craft fairs // markets and maybe branch into independent stores. Bee charities include potential BBKA (the british bee keepers association), RSBP, Adopt a hive ect to negotiate donations and profit margins in relation to bee’s needs product line 

Slide 9. -

Slide 10. -

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Slide 12. -

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Feedback & Evaluation 

Overall I feel like our presentation went quite well! We were able to answer any questions at the end with confidence, and during the presentation the other team members helped to pitch in if at times I forgot any of the information.

The idea of expanding the products from just candles to beauty was a suggestion I thought was really great, if we were to undertake this project for real I would consider the possibilities of a bee-line beauty range.

Life's a Pitch; Presentation Prep 2

We met up again as a group and began organising the final practical elements in place to make our company visual.  Hana had taken on the role of branding and came up with a series of possible logos and headers for our company; I knew Hana would be successful in this as her work is analogue and well rendered, provided the perfect joining of personal and human aesthetic with a professional feel. We collectively chose the ones we felt would work best across a range of both printed and digital promotional.

This logo was then merged with various colour palettes that Jade had picked out for each range; combining colours that felt contemporary but reflected each range perfectly.

It was also decided in the previous meeting that we would each design an image for every range, and we would pick the best ones of those to mock up onto applied surfaces for our presentation. Katie knew how to use the website Graphic Burger which allowed us to place our illustration on possible packaging options for the candles themselves.

On the side of marketing and presentation, I made up a commercial mock website for our company. It was integral that the layout was clean, accessible and easy to navigate for all ages, young and old, whilst still retaining a contemporary fresh and high end professional finish Given that our target audience would range from younger students (basics and black magic) with more mature clients tapping into the bee range, our website had to be able to cater for all ages.

It is also worth mentioning at this point that we discussed the use of online social media in our company, when establishing our business it could be beneficial to send out small//sample candles to well known veggie // vegan bloggers and vloggers, this would target the younger target audience. A blog alongside our website would be important in retaining a 'human' element to our company; allowing people to see behind the scenes // how the company works // who works within the company. Sites like twitter and instagram would primarily target our student based audience whilst a facebook page would allow us to keep updated with an older (but still internet savy) audience.

Jade and Hana sat down and looked into pricing // manufacturing costs and implications. If this were to be launched, we would have to send out for a lot of quotes in regards to manufacturing, we had to recognise this on top of the essential costs that come with setting up any business. 

OUIL504 Evaluation

Summative Evaluation OUIL504

This project has definitely had it's ups and downs throughout the months I've worked on it, I feel as though I have been pushed, and pushed myself, further than I would have thought possible and for that reason I am proud to have finished it. 

Beginning this project I really enjoyed Murakami's work and the stories and tone of voice he used to tell them, however quickly found through summer work sketches and initial drawings once I had joined level 5, that the images I were creating felt overly repetitive and over done. They all felt very cliched, and I didn't want to create just another set of portraits about sad women, as I felt that was all anyone who tackled Murakami's work to come away with. Because of this ambition to push past the obvious, I feel as though I've grown a little conceptually. I've always had ambition in my ideas but feel as though my final pieces rarely manage to fully communicate them; they often become overly complicated or loose the spark and energy they started with. With these final pieces however, I feel proud to have successfully communicated a new side to Murakami, the best feeling is people getting excited about my work BECAUSE of it's concept and fresh viewpoint!

Practically I'm also quite pleased with my outcomes! Often my finals loose the energy they had in my sketchbook and this is something I've often wrestled with; trying to create pieces that look high finished and crafted without looking robotic or awkward in their execution. This project has shown me how PROCESS can effect and finalise a piece. Using images from my sketchbook that have that raw energy to them and taking those images through another process can allow for a replication of that same energetic, fluid image making with a higher level of detail and crafting. The combination of elements from different images to create a final piece is also something new I've discovered this project which came in helpful during the making of my final compositions and images.

The processes themselves have been a learning curve this module, trying to not merely understand but become GOOD at a process I've not done before in detail, or in the case of After Effects at all, is something that has continuously challenged me throughout this project. Though, at points, I felt as though the project was failing because I didn't feel comfortable and confident in the work I was making, I've learnt this can be a GOOD thing! Because I pushed my work but practically and conceptually in ways I didn't feel comfortable with I feel my work has grown immensely. Understanding how to adapt the process to meet my needs has been very important; while I didn't want my work to be dictated by the processes or programs I was using, I also had to find a balance between what I wanted my work to do and how I could use the processes//programs to help make it come to fruition. 

On a lesser positive note I feel something I have really struggled with throughout this project was time management. In the last couple of months 2015 especially I felt myself becoming very overwhelmed with workload both from this module and others. While I tried to pick myself up from this multiple times through vigorous time planning and organising myself, I still felt a little lacking in lustre. This leads to another struggle I've had within this project and that's keeping my momentum going. I feel I both started and ended this project on a high, but there were definitely dips throughout the middle part of this module. Largely I think this was down to my own personal mental attitude. I let the workload get on top of me a lot and rather than take the time out to really breathe and take a break from looking at this project so I was able to organise myself objectively, I pressured myself too much to get too much done. This has been one of the biggest things I've learnt throughout this entire project, it's just as important to know when to take a break from a project as it is to know when to pull up your boots and really tackle it!

Overall, though at times it may have got me down, this project has resulted in work I feel extremely proud of. I have pushed myself a lot in terms of demanding more from my work and I'd like to think that has paid off. I've learnt so much in so many different areas throughout this brief and feel I am leaving it a stronger illustrator and a happy person. 

Life's a Pitch; Presentation Prep 1

At this stage we began planning for our final presentation. The best way to go about this, we felt, was to organise and plan out the slides, assigning jobs to each of us so we all had something to bring to the presentation. Given that I'd done a lot of market research through this project, it made sense that I tackled marketing and PR. This would include how the products would be represented and advertised to the appropriate audiences. 

With a breakdown of each slide and the information we would include, we decided to each go away and develop what we needed before coming back together again to practically put the presentation together. Our main talking points had been noted on each slide and I felt confident about presenting it as a group; we felt it would be important that we didn't rely too much on a 'script'. Within the group we all know what we're talking about and have an in depth knowledge of the company; this will help with the confidence and competence of our presentation!

Life’s a Pitch; S.W.O.T. Strategies

I was absent during this session which was unfortunate as I felt my market research could have really helped with locking the companies visual aesthetic down even more than it already was. However I made sure to keep in contact with my group throughout this session and sent them links to all the websites I’d looked at in terms of current companies and competitors. When I next met up with my group I was a little worried that the company was starting to become over complex again, with including initial ideas such as wedding candles or gift packs, so we sat down and agreed to just stick to our three ranges, Basics, Black Magic and Bees. Hana has been very interested in packaging throughout this project and I feel her skill set would work perfectly in giving the company that ‘handmade human’ touch.

Looking over the S.W.O.T. sheet however it was very helpful in breaking down which parts of the company were working and which parts we’d need to look into more; I feel one of the main weaknesses in this company at the minute is manufacturing and production, as none of us are particularly sure which way would be the best to go about setting up a candle business.